


Highwire walking

by TheWrongKindOfPC



Category: A Charm of Magpies Series - K. J. Charles
Genre: Established Relationship, M/M, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-17
Updated: 2017-12-17
Packaged: 2019-02-16 01:07:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,597
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13043352
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheWrongKindOfPC/pseuds/TheWrongKindOfPC
Summary: A day in the life of the justiciary's newest recruits. In which Ned and Crispin solve a crime, solve another crime, and then go on a date where they try to evaluate whether something is a crime or not.





	Highwire walking

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ninja_orange](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ninja_orange/gifts).



> Hey, ninja_orange, thanks for the awesome prompt! I've enjoyed writing about these guys a ton, and I didn't get to everything I would have liked to in an ideal world (I especially liked your prompt about Crispin and Ned meeting Crane. I have a notion that Ned would not be the biggest fan of Crane's, at least not right away--but alas, that is not a scene that is in this fic!), but I got the chance to address a lot of the questions and concerns I had at the end of the book, and that has been awesome. Happy yuletide, I hope there's something in here that works for you!
> 
> Huge thanks to la_dissonance for the fabulous beta.

Ned thought he was fast on the way to the justiciary for help, but rushing back, Stephen Day and the only-just-postpartum Esther Gold at his heels, he finds himself drawing on speed and energy he would have sworn he no longer had. The thing is still contained when he gets back to the square, so he must have managed to be just fast enough. Across the square, through the haze of magic and restraints and the thing, Ned can see Crispin, listing dangerously to one side, hauling himself upright with one arm hooked around a lamp post, the other arm engaged in furiously scribbling in chalk against the dirty brick of the alley wall, eyes darting back and forth between the thing in the square as it strains its bindings, and the marks he’s making on the wall. 

Behind Ned, Day's voice rings out, shouting something indistinct, and largely drowned out to Ned’s ears by the crackle of the power he lets loose. Across the square, Ned can see Crispin's head jerk at the sound as Day's strike hits the thing, and then it's lucky Mrs. Gold is there to replace Crispin's restraints, because it's then that he looks up, catches Ned’s eye, and sees the reinforcements he's brought. 

There's bright red blood streaming from Crispin's nose that wasn't there when Ned took off for the Justiciary office not twenty minutes before. Ned’s vision is hazy and a little distant, but he can see the red blood, can make out the wide, beatific smile that stretches across Crispin’s wan face, and then he drops in what looks like a dead faint. 

Ned looks to Day, to Mrs. Gold, frantic, not sure whether he's looking to see if they need help, or just to see if they saw Crispin fall, but Esther answers both questions at once. "Go on," she says. "We'll handle this, you go and make sure he doesn't end up trampled," and then Ned's running again, racing across the square and skirting around the magical battle still in progress to make his way to where Crispin fell.

"C'mon, Freckles," he mutters, half to himself, as he heaves Crispin's torso into his lap, pats ineffectually at his cheek. "Open your eyes for me, will you?" 

Crispin's eyes stutter open like he was waiting to be asked. He squints up at Ned before focusing in on Ned's face, and then there's another of those wide, warm, heartstopping smiles that has no place in the same alley as that creature Ned can still hear Day and Esther struggling against a few dozen feet away, and then all of the sudden he lurches sideways, braced on an elbow against Ned's side, other hand slapping down to keep him from faceplanting into the cobbles, as a great, hacking cough tearing through him, drops of blood--please god just from the bloody nose--splattering on the ground before him. 

Ned reaches out, draws some of the sweaty, matted hanks of yellow-brown hair back from Crispin's face, his brow, and tries to remember if any of the other practitioners around the office have described anything like this as normal, after using a great deal of power. After a moment, Crispin pushes himself upright, sending Ned a wobbly smile he doesn't seem to have noticed is still smeared with crusting, brownish blood. "I'm alright, Ned," he says, tone a little reproachful, as if Ned is the one overreacting here, although Ned feels he’s hardly reacted at all. "It's lucky you were so fast, though, I'm not sure I could have held it too much longer, I don’t think I’m strong enough." 

It's so very Crispin, Ned thinks, barely a breath into his victory and already berating himself. “You’re a mess, is what you are,” Ned tells him, reaching into his pocket and digging out a crushed handkerchief, which he reaches out with to swipe gently along Crispin’s nose and upper lip, and then again at his chin. It gets off most of the still-wet blood, leaves the edges where it’s dried on looking brownish and stained, like water-damage on old paper. 

When Ned pulls his hand back, Crispin looks down at the stained cloth like it’s an alien artifact, something as strange as the thing in the square which Ned can’t actually hear anymore, hopefully because Day and Mrs. Gold have it under control, and not because it’s currently devouring them. Crispin reaches forward to touch the handkerchief, then reaches up to touch his face. “You held it as long as you needed to,” Ned tells him, because it’s true, and to distract him from the nervy look he’s getting, and because there’s too much daylight and too much chance of observation to pull him into a hug the way Ned wants to--to feel Crispin, breathing and afraid and alive, warm and real and present against his chest.

Instead, he looks up and sees, with satisfaction but without surprise, Mrs. Gold towering over the terrifying being that had been just too much for he and Crispin to take down on their own. He says, “You think you can stand? I reckon we should see how they managed that, then see about getting you to Doctor Gold’s.”

“I’m fine,” Crispin says, but in the end, it takes a hand up from Ned to get him on his feet, and an arm around his waist to keep him there as they make their way across the square. 

When they get there, Mrs. Gold takes one look at Crispin, and says, “Well, you certainly aren’t up for a stroll. Steph, get out there and fetch us a cab. You,” she says to Ned, “Clean up Tredarloe’s scribbles,” gesturing at the chalk markings of Crispin’s spells, his desperate bindings marked out in brick against the wall, probably gone dormant, but still not safe enough to leave lying around where anyone could stumble across it, “And then come meet us at the surgery.”

For a moment, Ned wants to argue, because she doesn’t _understand_ , but then, something in her look says that maybe she does, and that’s worse, somehow, even though Mrs. Gold has never seemed like she’d be the type to use it against them.

Still, he still might not have felt sure about splitting up again with Crispin looking quite this ghostly, but Crispin pushes him off gently till he’s standing under his own power, then says, “I’m fine, Ned,” with a flicker of a grin--not that ghastly, beatific, serene, could-be-his-deathbed smile from earlier, but a crooked, witch-light-bright, edge of a smile--Ned’s Freckles.

“Fine,” he says, “I’ll clean up your mess, but just this once, mind.”

…

By the time Ned makes it to the Golds’ home, which is also Doctor Gold’s office, they’ve cleaned Crispin up a bit, washed his face and had him put on someone else’s shirt and jacket--probably Doctor Gold’s, for how loose it fits. He’s leaning sideways against the back of a chair, one temple pressed to the headrest, but when Ned comes in he pushes himself upright.

He looks worlds better than he did, but he still seems faint and pale, and with the way his face and hair are still damp from what must have been a hasty wash to sluice off the bloody nose and the grit from the alley--“My days, you look half-drowned, Freckles,” Ned can’t help exclaiming.

Crispin’s smile in return is a sheepish little thing that starts small and blooms wider as Ned walks closer.

“He’s fine, just a little drained, just needs a few days of food and rest,” Doctor Gold says, before turning his attention to his wife and to Mr. Day. “I thought your kind of training saved teaching students how to drain their own life-force until much nearer to the final exam, when they might have the judgment not to do it, if they can help it.”

Ned doesn’t like the sound of that, neither the phrase ‘drain their own life-force,’ nor the implication that Crispin’s heroics in the alley had been thrown after a trivial situation, one which could have been solved in a less dramatic way. He takes on the easy one first. “And what was he supposed to do?” he asks, keeping his tone at least a bit in-check, because he likes Doctor Gold, and because there’s a good chance he’ll have their lives in his hands again soon.

“Draw power from the ether like the rest of us!” Gold snaps, exasperated but not, Ned doesn’t think, angry, and that sounds familiar, sounds like something he remembers Crispin fretting about over his lessons.

“That’s the trouble with Tredarloe,” Day says, and Ned’s not wild about his tone either, but he can recognize that it’s largely because he’s hungry and exhausted, and a little banged up around the edges, and that he’s been in a heightened state of worry for hours now. “I didn’t teach him that way, it’s his instinct. He doesn’t sense the ether in the normal way,” and Crispin ducks his head a little, there, “And the mechanics of draining yourself for energy isn’t so different from draining your own blood--I suspect he didn’t need to be taught how, I suspect he just does it by instinct,” he finishes, looking to Crispin for confirmation.

Crispin nods, then says, “It’s--I think, in practice, I’m doing better, calling the ether in writing, but when something’s going wrong, sometimes there just isn’t enough there and if I need to stop it--I didn’t think, I just reached.”

Day nods, and Ned reflects that it’s too bad he’s days away from leaving town for who-knows-how-long, since he seems to be the closest of anyone to understanding Crispin’s power who hasn’t turned out to be a murderer yet.

“Well, it’s a lucky thing you weren’t trained in it,” Day says. “You haven’t drained yourself too deep, you should recover fairly quickly. Just take a few days to eat and rest and sleep it off.” Almost as an afterthought, he says, “You too, Hall. Good work today, take a little time to rest.”

He’s perfectly casual in the way he says it, but there’s a sense squirming under Ned’s skin that he knows, that he’s offering Ned the time because he knows exactly how many of their free hours Crispin and Ned spend together. 

He’d talked to Crispin about it, once-- _do you think they know? Do you think they suspect?_

Crispin had laughed in answer, but there had been something nervous in it. _I don’t think they suspect, I think they make assumptions. I think they would even if we were just very good friends_ , and there, he’d looked at Ned sideways, from beneath his lashes. _People do, with me. I thought you knew._

And Ned had known, in a way, had seen the knowing glance from another patron as they settled in together on a bench at the music hall, or the faint curiosity from an acquaintance when he and Crispin stopped at a stall for dinner on the way back to the shop. It feels different, though, with people they see every day, the justicars, who they work with, but who neither he nor Crispin really knows well, or can quite manage to trust further than they need to.

“Just stop in the council chambers tomorrow to make your reports, both of you,” Day tells them as an afterthought on their way out the door.

…

Out in the street, Crispin doesn’t think twice before following Ned’s turn down toward Grape Street, instead of continuing on to his own lodgings.

“Going my way?” Ned asks, quirking an eyebrow, and it’s only then that Crispin realizes he could have done differently, or even just asked first.

Done is done, though, so he scrapes together as sunny a smile as he can muster, given the fact that he feels like he could eat an entire horse and then sleep for a week, and reminds Ned, “Faster walk to the circus from your place.”

Ned laughs. “I appreciate the thought, Freckles, but I remember the doc saying something about you needing your rest, after the stunt you pulled today.”

“It’s the last day, tomorrow,” Crispin reminds him. “And they’re saying this troupe won’t come back through the city for another year, and I know you wanted to see the high wire act.” And then, because he can practically feel Ned gearing up to be all practical and self-sacrificing, “We’ll get seats, and we can eat there, I’ll get plenty of rest--just rest with a bit more of a view. And we’ll have to go out to give our statements for the council, anyway.” 

The fact of their need to stop in to the justiciary tomorrow blows Crispin’s argument about Ned’s place being nearer to the circus out of the water, because it’s Crispin’s digs that are decidedly nearer to the office and council chamber, and he wonders vaguely if Ned is going to call him on it. Ned’s place has Ned in it, though, and Crispin doesn’t think he needs to say that part aloud. It has been a long, strange day, and the thought of not going home alone, not parting for the night, holds a lot of appeal.

“You’re a menace, you know,” Ned says, but he says it in the way that means Crispin has won, and he’s veering their trajectory leftwards to make a stop at a stall for plum pudding, so Crispin just grins back and tells him, “You’re my favorite,” and makes sure that there’s a suggestive cast to the way he cleans the sticky sweetness that’s left on his fingers after the plum pudding has been devoured as they finish their walk home.

…

The paper store isn’t quite the forest of discarded stacks of the flotsam and jetsam of a thousand lives that it was when Crispin saw it first--in the weeks since they’d both started working at the justiciary, Ned had stopped taking in new stock, just kept quietly selling off the old backlog to his regulars when they came to him, and the room has been slowly emptying accordingly.

Crispin isn’t sure what Ned’s going to do when his stock runs out. He’d asked, once, but Ned had been as evasive as Ned ever got--had deflected with a crack about Crispin missing the paper dust, and then let out a quiet breath and said, _The truth is, I don’t know_.

Crispin likes to think that he left the conversation there out of respect for Ned’s privacy, giving him space to figure things out. In the secret, cowardly parts of his heart, though, he wonders if he was just shying back from Ned’s uncertainty because he’s used to relying on Ned’s unshakable steadiness.

The slow cleaning out of the paper in the shop, though, means that there’s a lot of extra space, and one of the things they’ve been doing with that space is laying out a blanket on the floor, and turning pretty much every meal into a picnic. It makes Crispin feel strange, a little young and silly, but in a nice way, giggly and carefree like he never actually felt as a strange, lonely child, or a self-important, power-thirsty youth.

It gives Ned the space to stretch out his legs at the end of a long day, too, which is something Crispin is never going to object to, watching the strong, rangy lines of Ned’s body stretch and then go slack with calm. As they finish the pies they’ve brought home with them, Crispin finds himself listing into Ned’s side, leaning back against one of the remaining stacks of paper between them and the wall, and it’s only then that Ned lays a warm hand on his thigh, and says, “So what are we going to do, then, about this business with you draining your life force?”

When he says it like that, the words _life force_ butting up melodramatically against the warm, calm, ordinariness of the rest of the sentence, Crispin can’t suppress a soft, brief laugh. “Nothing to be done, is there? It isn’t anybody else’s fault I have no senses.”

In the past month, since they’ve started their training with the justiciary, Crispin feels like he’s had appointments with most of the active practitioners in London, to see if anyone had an idea of what to do with him. _Plenty of power and no senses at all_ , one old fellow who’d used to sit on the council had summed up. _Exactly the type to turn warlock. I’d keep an eye on this one_ , he’d warned Mrs. Gold.

“Isn’t your fault either,” Ned says staunchly. “Aren’t they supposed to be teaching you?”

Crispin laughs again, and knows it sounds tired. “They can’t teach what isn’t there, Ned.”

Ned makes a sound that clearly suggests that he’s not sure about that, and slings an arm around Crispin’s shoulders, and Crispin wants so much for this to be a nice moment, a moment of enjoying what ended up being something of a shared triumph, and not a moment for talking about his own failure, so he turns to face Ned, says, “Anyway, we did alright today, didn’t we? Senses or no senses, we make a pretty good team.” 

And then Ned’s reaching for him, just like Crispin hoped he might, and he lets them get distracted, because having a little extra space to spread out is another reason why picnicking on the floor of the paper store has been one of their favorite things, these last weeks.

…

Ned only half-wakes, a few hours later, to Crispin’s grumbling about, “Wake up or come to bed,” stays half-asleep as Crispin hauls him to his feet and drags them to the little bed-chamber, then pushes Ned down into the chilly sheets and arranges their bodies together the way he wants them, shifting and adjusting till they’re just so, and then settling in, like a housecat turning circles before ending up in exactly the position it started in. It’s comfortable because it’s familiar, now--Ned’s own, sated sleepiness, and Crispin’s tense, nervous energy settling slowly down to sleep beside him.

Crispin is gone when Ned wakes, hours later, to the dim light of the sun streaming in from where the curtain setting his sleeping space apart from the rest of the shop is a little askew, and the church bells from three streets over tolling solemnly through the crisp morning air. He’s left Ned a note, though--a narrow strip of what looks like the margin of an old broadside, neatly torn out to leave the rest of the page still saleable. In that elegant script that he says was almost as big of a part of his early, dubious training as the lessons in magic, he’s written, _Gone back to my room to change, meet you at the council hall_ , and at the end, he’s doodled an arrow pointing towards a thumbnail sketch of a circus tent, with the flaps thrown open, and a tiny horse and tightrope with an infinitesimal, precariously-placed high-line walker visible through it. Ned grins down at the scrap, and then pulls a pin out of the wall by his bed to add the note and its tiny drawing to a small collection on Crispin’s sketches pinned to the wall.

Now that he thinks of it, it only makes sense, that Crispin would have to change his clothes before giving a deposition before the council--he walked to Ned’s last night still wearing borrowed clothing of Doctor Gold’s and he doesn’t have anything of his own at the paper store, and showing up in Ned’s spare shirt would make it even more obvious that he hadn’t spent the night at home than showing up in Doctor Gold’s ill-fitting, borrowed things. Ned had been too tired to think of it the night before, but he wonders, a little, if Crispin had--he’d had to think to wake and go early in the day to do it, after all, and Ned doesn’t think he’d woken in a panic and hared off, either--he vaguely remembers half-waking to Crispin slipping out of bed, reaching out and receiving a quick kiss and a, _go back to sleep, you have a few hours_.

From the light coming in through the window, and from the light, rested feeling in his bones, Ned has a feeling he’s had those few hours and more, so he doesn’t dawdle on his way to the council. Heading into the chamber, Janossi tells him that Crispin has already made his statement, and that he’s doing them a quick favor, talking to a warlock’s apprentice Mac’s team brought in last night.

That sounds a little murky to Ned, and not much like the day’s rest he and Crispin had been promised only last night, but then he’s heading in to the council chamber, and there’s no real time to think about it. He talks the council through the time he and Crispin spent tracking the bogart-thing’s trail of destruction yesterday, through their surprise at actually finding it, and their lack of preparedness for what is apparently a fairly common, but dangerous, magical construct, a slippery thing that seems to adapt to the fears and weaknesses of its foes, its lack of true identity for Crispin to latch onto in one of his drawings, and Ned’s eventual thought to trap it in reflections.

He doesn’t go into too much detail about the moment when Crispin had told him _I can hold it, but I don’t know for how long, so unless you have any more ideas about actually stopping it, I need you to go for help_ , about the way it had felt suddenly very like their struggle against the creature from the witch bottles, and that similarity had made him wary of leaving, how he’d dithered a moment longer than he should have, and how, if they hadn’t spent the past weeks learning from and starting to trust the justiciars they’ve been working with, he’s not sure he would have--well, it doesn’t matter, and it went the way it went, and the thing is contained, and when he comes to the end of his tale, he’s actually congratulated on handling the situation well, and preventing what would probably have been a good deal of destruction.

“And you say you followed the beast using your hearing?” sour-faced Maupert asks, and there’s something like respect in his tone.

Ned nods, because the strange awareness, the not-sounds that ring in his head whenever magic is near, they haven’t gone away--if anything, they’ve gotten stronger. He doesn’t always love it, but that kind of hearing is certainly how he and Crispin had managed to go on the offensive against the thing yesterday, instead of just trailing along after places where it had already wreaked havoc.

“Shame, such a strong sense of hearing on a flit,” Maupert says, and just like that, he’s as horrible as he ever has been. “Waste of good senses.”

“Well, it’s not exactly like I can give them back,” Ned drawls, but at that point, Mrs. Gold catches his eye, so he leaves it there, leaving Maupert to dither _of course not_ s and _appreciate your service_ s.

Ned hadn’t thought he was nervous, but as he leaves the council chamber, he feels tension that he hadn’t known had been building leave his body. No matter how often he goes before the council after a case, he has a notion he’s never going to quite be able to shake the feeling of being brought there the first, and then again the second time, confused and a little overwhelmed and bolstered by his own self-righteous anger at these people who were so clearly looking for anyone to blame but themselves, and who didn’t seem to care nearly as much for keeping ordinary folk from harm as for protecting their own comfort, and who seemed far too eager to pin their own failures on his Crispin.

His Crispin who, as he heads out of the council chamber this time, Mrs. Gold intercepts him to lead him toward. Ned isn’t sure how much he likes her assumption, especially because she’s right--he doesn’t like the idea of being so seen, especially by Mrs. Gold, who is uncanny and formidable at first meeting, and has only grown more so as he’s seen the extent of her power.

She’s not wrong, though, and it’s convenient not to have to come up with an excuse to hang around the justiciary on his day off, so he takes it for what it is and follows her down towards the holding area where Crispin’s been trying to convince a half-trained warlock with an apparent resistance to any kind of compulsion they’ve tried to share where her master is holed up, draining victims for some dodgy purpose.

Mrs. Gold says all the right things about making Crispin get some rest, but if there’s one thing Ned has learned in time with the justiciary, it’s that no case makes its way to them until it’s deadly and urgent, and there are never enough justiciars to go around, and so, with the best intentions in the world, it’s the kind of job designed to chew you up and spit you out if you let it. Ned’s sure this case is no exception.

He’s proved right as they make their way towards the holding room to see that the door is just slightly ajar, and hear the murmur of not one, but two voices coming from within. Mrs. Gold had said they sent Crispin in as a last ditch effort, because no one else had managed to get the girl to talk, and that the hope was that Crispin might have enough in common with her to get under her skin, and it sounds like he has.

Mrs. Gold puts a finger to her lips and a hand over Ned’s arm, stopping him a few steps away from the door to listen to the quiet, tense conversation within.

…

“Look, I know what he must have told you about us,” Crispin tries again. “That we follow archaic rules and prejudices, and don’t leave room for experimentation and exploration, and making blanket statements about good and evil doesn’t make much sense when you’ve been given access to the kind of power no government or church can comprehend, and that you can enact works of greatness with this power, but you have to be prepared to make sacrifices.” 

Crispin knows because these were the sentiments that whispered him to sleep at night for years on years, and from the way the girl’s eyes widen almost imperceptibly, he’s probably right in saying it’s not too far off from what she’d had whispered in her ear since the power started to appear.

He thinks he’s right but he doesn’t know it until he goes on, “And you believe it, and you get deeper and deeper in, and then you’re in so deep, and you’ve given up so much that it has to be true, because it has to make what you gave up worth it, doesn’t it?”

The girl shudders, at that, and when she looks up, her eyes look desperate, and the last thing in the world Crispin wants to do is ask her what he knows he needs to ask her. He thinks, for a minute, of Ned, who has never shied away from asking hard questions, and then asks her, “What did you give up? What does the power need to be worth?”

She answers, and Crispin feels not just his heart, or his breath, but his very blood stop in his veins, as she says. “My sister.” but then she goes on, “He’s got my sister, my sister is one of the ones he has,” and that’s worse, because all of the sudden, Crispin knows what ritual her master is doing. 

Sacrifice of your own blood and bone is powerful. Sacrifice of your love, blood of your blood, bone of your bone, is even more so. Even Marleigh hadn’t wanted to venture so deep, or at least, Crispin hadn’t thought so, but now, thinking back to the way Marleigh had talked about the ritual, academically but somehow testingly, he wonders if perhaps the only reason Marleigh hadn’t tried with him was because he’d thought Crispin would balk.

 _Good_ , he thinks, fierce and sudden, thinking of his own brothers, who he hasn’t felt fully comfortable with in years, since long before Marleigh took him on, but who he can’t imagine letting any harm come to, not if there was anything he could do to stop it. He asks the girl, “Has he done it yet? Has he used her?”

At first he doesn’t think she’ll say another word to him, but something in the urgency of his tone seems to have shaken her words loose, because she looks up at him and says, “I don’t--I don’t know.”

“You’d know.” Crispin might not know too much about magic, not the dangerous, cruel kind he was learning before, and not the cold, difficult, right kind he’s supposed to be learning now, but he does know this. He remembers the way the potential of his power had rushed through him as his master had guided his hand around the knife, the way it, as much as the adrenaline, had almost, but not quite, masked the burn of the air against part of his body that had never been meant to feel air.

“For it to work best, he’d try to make sure to do it with you there, to have you do it, but even if we spooked him and he rushed it, it’s a sacrifice tied to his tie to you; you’d feel it, you’d know.”

She looks up at him again, and her face is a mask of conflict, and he thinks--he thinks if he’s supposed to do any good in this role, in this job, this is the moment, he has to get this right. He says, “You still have the chance to stop him.”

He says, “No amount of power will ever manage to be enough to be worth that. Even if you were free, nothing you could ever do would truly be able to make that feel worth it to you.”

He says, “Tell us where he is and we can stop him,” says, “You’re not in so deep that you can’t get out, but the longer you wait, the closer you’ll get.”

She looks at him and she’s young, she’s so much younger than he was when he learned the truth about Marleigh, younger than he was when he wrenched his eyes open to force himself to watch as the scripti for pain did its work on the rat, only just barely as old as he was when he held a knife and made a choice he’ll never be able to take back, and he thinks she’s not going to listen to him.

She’s not going to listen to him, and she’s going to make a bigger mistake than he ever made and maybe it’s not going to be his fault, but it’s going to stick with him as something he should have stopped, and then she says, “He’s got a place with a basement in an alley off Spital Crescent,” and then, after taking the kind of fortifying breath that seems to cement having made a decision, “Do you have some paper? I’ll show you.”

…

Crispin comes bursting out the door, nearly knocking Ned and Mrs. Gold over in his haste to find a pen and paper--he could have left her with his pencil and a scrap of paper from his pocket, but Ned said, some time last week, that the pencil he’s been using the most has started to whisper like him a little bit, and he’s starting to think that graphomancers should be careful who they casually lend their writing implements to. He’s not sure if that’s silly, and there’s no one to ask but a murderous dead man or two, but it seems safest not to lend anything that whispers like him to someone who thought she might be willing to sacrifice her own sister for power, even if she has thought better of it.

He’s also looking for Janossi, or Mac, or anyone else he can turn the situation over to, because all of the sudden, he feels wild and out-of-control, and Mrs. Gold will do nicely for that. He looks at her, not sure how to even start to explain, but she just says, “Yes, we heard,” and, “You look like you’re about to keel over, Tredarloe.”

Crispin feels a little bit like it, too, turns to Ned who reaches into the inner pocket of his jacket and pulls out a pencil and paper, which he offers to Crispin. Mrs. Gold takes them, moves into the room, and says, “You two, go find Mac for me, it sounds like it’s time for him to do a little running for this girl’s poor sister’s life.”

…

Eventually, it is Mac that goes after the fellow, and he does do it at a pretty decent clip, though it’s hardly a dead run, like the way Ned took off to go for backup yesterday, Crispin thinks, wryly. Mac is a few years older than them, though, and even in his prime, Crispin is willing to bet that he never had Ned’s agility, or his unflagging stamina, so probably his more sedate pace is for the best.

He tries to get Crispin to go with him, and Crispin doesn’t want to, but he _would_ \--seeing this through seems like the least he can do, when he thinks of how close he could have come to being in this girl’s position, and how he’s only somewhat sure what he would have done if he had been. He thinks Mac would have let him come, too, but Esther shakes her head, saying something about how he’s already put himself closer to a question of warlockery than he probably should be, with the way the council has never quite stopped jumping at shadows around him.

That seems, Crispin thinks, a little bit like trying to shut the barn door when the horses have already gone running--he’s already involved, and he’s certainly going to see through whatever happens to her in the future.

Ned, though, says, “And haring off after madmen is hardly what I’d call taking it easy, Freckles,” which is certainly another piece of ammunition Esther’s going to use.

When Crispin shoots him a look in response, Ned just smiles, unrepentant, and says, “What? You’re looking none too chipper, still. Someone had to say it,” and _oh_ , sometimes it terrifies Crispin, how easy it is to see that Ned cares. If Crispin can feel it, he’s sure everyone else must see, too.

Still, Crispin has a feeling Ned’s not wrong--he feels he could eat a horse, and he’s already eaten enough today to make the man at the pie stall he stopped at on the way in to the office raise his eyebrows in something Crispin is choosing to read as admiration. Instead of arguing further, Crispin decides to let this battle go, and instead to draw his line in the sand.

“I want to be there when she goes before the council,” Crispin tells Mrs. Gold, not entirely sure that it’s true, but also not sure he can stand not to.

“I’m not sure that’s the best idea for your reputation, Tredarloe,” she tells him, and she’s probably not wrong, but there’s not much he can do about that.

“You sent me in there,” he reminds her, “You and Joss. And the reason you thought I could help is the same reason I have to be there. You’ll let me know?”

She nods, and then they’re on their way, and Crispin’s surprised to look up at the clock in the square and see that it’s still, somehow, barely, morning. Part of him is surprised that it’s still light out at all, like days must have gone by since he last saw sunlight. He turns to Ned, who’s been, with a few exceptions, quiet all morning, and says, with as much brightness as he can force into his tone, “So! Circus?”

Ned laughs and claps him on the back, brief and warm and clearly a stand-in for another, less public kind of touch, and Crispin wants to sag with relief, it’s so warm and casual and normal, so miles away from the dark, drastic decisions he’s been enmeshed in since he stepped into the warlock girl’s cell.

…

Before they ended up in the middle of a much more dramatic morning than either Crispin or Ned had expected, Crispin had clearly dressed for the day with the circus in mind, rather than the report he had to make before the council first. It’s not often, now, that Ned looks at Crispin and sees him as he first did--will-o-the-wisp and fey and a little bit of a dandy--but that doesn’t mean that any of those things stopped being true, it just means that he’s unable to see them without seeing what’s behind them, now; the strength and stubbornness, the contrariness and goodwill that add impossible depth to that impression.

As first impressions go, it wasn’t wrong, though--Crispin does like bright colors and flashy fashions, and the looks from others that go with them. He’d explained it once as, “Well, they’re going to look anyway, aren’t they?” And here, Ned had remembered his own first look, the moment of, _oh, I know about you_. “They may as well be looking at what I want them to see,” Crispin had finished, and once he’d said it out loud, Ned had started to identify that attitude in so much of the way he acted when they were out and about.

Today, he’s wearing a bright, embroidered waistcoat that’s a favorite of his, a little bit of a chintzy thing that folds neatly around his trim waist, and there are a few different kind of looks he’ll probably draw on the walk down to the river, but in the crowd at the circus, Ned thinks he’ll look more like an appropriate part of the atmosphere. Ned grins at him. “Well, I wouldn’t want you to have gotten all decked out for nothing.”

Crispin grins and widens his eyes, “Would it be for nothing when I’ve had the chance to brighten the council’s chamber with my presence?”

“It’s true,” Ned agrees, and, “They’re lucky to have you.”

“Not quite sure Maupert appreciated the effort,” Crispin says, glancing behind him to make sure no one’s listening.

“His loss,” Ned says, dropping his voice enough that it shouldn’t be audible to any but the most determined eavesdropper. “Dried up old stick, he’s no idea what’s worth looking at.”

Crispin smiles back faintly, says, “I’m afraid I still look a bit of a fright, but I appreciate your saying so.”

Fright isn’t the word Ned would have used, but Crispin does still look tired, dark circles under his eyes so deep they look carved there, despite the night’s sleep, tired and thin, not just in his usual way, but a little gaunt. He looks more like someone recovering from a long illness than a young man who’d been in the pink of health just yesterday morning. Ned thinks he knows the answer he’ll get, but he can’t help but try, “We don’t need to go out, though. We were given the time off because you’re supposed to be resting.”

“There are seats at the circus,” Crispin reminds him. “And what’s more restful than watching someone else on the high wire?”

…

At the circus, Ned knows the fellow who’s taking the tickets. This isn’t surprising, really, since Ned knows people everywhere. What’s stranger is that this time, Crispin knows him too, a little. That is, he’s sat down to eat with them a few evenings at the tavern down at the end of Grape Street, the past few months.

Ned still moves through the pleasantries, introducing him to the fellow, Bill, as, “You remember my friend, Crispin Tredarloe?”

It had made Crispin nervous, the first few times Ned had introduced him like that, like there was something necessarily suggestive about it, or like he should have an explanation ready for why Ned should be friends with him.

Ned is friends with everyone, though, or at least, with people from all walks of life, who seem to pop up everywhere they go. In the months that they’ve known each other, he’s noticed himself becoming part of the quiet narrative of Ned’s life, his odd, brightly-colored shadow in the eyes of Ned’s many friends. He’s also noticed how not many of those friends seem to be very close, how they’re bright and warm and always happy to see Ned and his broad good cheer, but none of them seem to have been allowed nearly as close as Crispin is. It’s a quiet, warm realization, and it’s in his mind, a little, when he greets Bill, dredging through his memory for what Bill had talked about last time they’d come across him.

“How’s the family? Is Rosie walking yet?”

“Like a trooper,” Bill says around a grin. “These days it’s all we can do to get her to stop, now and then. Which you’d know if yon man of mystery,” he gestured to Ned, “ever came for my waste anymore. I’ve sold it all to Jim Davies these three weeks past.”

There’s a reproach in his voice, but it’s mostly joking. Bill’s father-in-law runs a print shop that he needs more and more help with as he gets older, and Jim Davies, according to Bill once, _don’t know when to stop talking, nor when to start_.

“Sorry, mate,” Ned tells him. “This gig with the peelers seems like it might last a little while, you and Jim might want to start getting used to each other.”

“Ah, well,” Bill says reflectively. “Glad you’re well, mate.”

“Got any tips for us?” Ned asks, and Bill laughs.

“I’d sit a few rows up, if’n you’re not in the mood to be a part of the show,” he says, with the kind of chuckle that’s enough to send them climbing the stands towards the top row.

…

Bill’s warning sounds definite enough that Ned is interested in getting well out of range of whatever that dark chuckle was about--usually, he’s all for getting caught up in the action of a performance, but he’s tired, and Crispin looks even more so. He smiles gamely as they climb higher and higher into the stands, but Ned stops to buy them a twist of peanuts from the seller making his way through the seating area, and when he turns back around, Crispin is leaning down to rest his hands on his knees.

It’s a pose that bespeaks exhaustion, not least because posture like that will pull on the lines of his jacket, so Ned decides they’ve come far enough--they’re about half-way up, which he hopes will put them well out of range of whatever’s going to be afoot.

Crispin lets himself be herded onto the nearest bench, and after a few minutes, a woman a little older than Ned with three children in tow sets up camp between them and the aisle, and they’re fully committed to their perch. Ned flags down the first food vendor who comes by, and warms a little at Crispin’s grateful smile, resting a hand on Crispin’s shoulder as he levers himself up in a move that he hopes is casual.

It isn’t as if hawkers at the circus carry around three-course meals, but Ned makes his way back in, past their seatmates, with a tolerable assortment of sweets and snacks to go with the peanuts. When he’s settled again, he turns back to Crispin, who already has a cake half-devoured, and crumbs all over his face. It’s not a seductive look, but it makes Ned want to reach out anyway, brush his face clean and feel soft skin under his fingers, and it’s easy to get caught up in the illusion of privacy of the crowd, so many people of so many types, and all focused on themselves, on their own friends, like no one around them is even there. Ned settles for reaching into his pocket for a handkerchief to offer, remembering only once he’s fished it out that it’s still smeared with Crispin’s bloody nose from the day before.

Crispin looks down at it, then up at Ned, eyebrows quizzical, so Ned tucks it away, but gestures at the crumbs, and Crispin laughs, says, “I’m a right mess, aren’t I? And here you are thinking of everything.”

“It’s what you promised me,” Ned reminds him to see him laugh. “Plenty of rest and food, all the comforts of being tucked in at home with a hot brick, only this time with trapeze.”

Crispin bites down on a chuckle and chucks a peanut shell at Ned’s head in response, and then there’s the kind of commotion down in the right that means that, soon, the show is going to be underway.

…

The hypnotist is a new act, and hearing people talking about it was how they’d heard that this troupe was in town, so the existence of the act isn’t a surprise, but the man’s intensity is. He says, “Let yourselves drift, follow my voice into the ether,” in low, soothing tones, and Ned is, somewhere deep within himself, absurdly grateful that Bill warned them to look for seats further back, because even from here, he can feel himself swaying forward in a way he’s sure is not quite natural.

He looks over a Crispin, whose eyebrows are furrowed in more concentration than a hypnotist who’s now convincing a disreputable-looking fellow in the audience to cluck like a chicken really seems to warrant. It’s true that there’s something uncanny about the fellow--both the unelaborate way he seems to be playing the audience, without ritual or props or tricks, and the way the audience members seem to be surprised at themselves even as they’re doing the things he’s telling them they will. It’s almost like magic.

“Ned?” Crispin asks in an undertone. “You don’t--you don’t hear anything, do you?” And once he says it, Ned finds that he does, a bit, a strange humming that doesn’t seem to be coming from the hypnotist so much as it seems drawn to him--it’s as if something in the air is being funneled to the man through the audience.

After a moment, still straining his ears to try to latch onto the odd, not-vibration that isn’t faint so much as subtle, Ned realizes he never actually answered Crispin’s question. “He has to be doing--something, right?” Crispin goes on. “But it doesn’t look like--I can’t see him reaching for it.

And it’s true, Ned thinks--when he sees Stephen Day or Mrs. Gold using their power, they’re definitely reaching out for something that’s already there, and this doesn’t sound like that does. This man seems more like he’s calling for something blindly, and isn’t sure what he’s going to get back. The pause drags on, and the surprised-looking front-three rows of the audience seem surprised to find themselves singing an off-key but apparently-unrehearsed three-part harmony arrangement of a recent dance-hall favorite, and Ned turns to Crispin and nods. “He’s doing something, but I’ve no notion what.”

“Should we …do something?” Crispin sounds as uncomfortable and uncertain in the idea as Ned feels, when he pictures them charging down through the stands to try to halt the display of power mid-performance.

“Best not,” Ned says without conviction, in an undertone and after another pause, eyes still trained down at the right and ears still straining for a sound that isn’t a sound at all. “He’s not hurting anyone, after all, is he? And I don’t like our chances if his new friends in the front row try to stop us from getting closer.”

Crispin nods in agreement, but this time it’s his turn not to draw his eyes away from the ring long enough to reply, and what he asks next is absent and seems barely directed at Ned at all. “What’s he using as a focus, I wonder?”

…

Crispin’s still sitting there as the stands start to empty, and after a moment, Ned asks him, “Well then, should we be getting home?”

But Crispin turns to him, wide-eyed, and asks, “Are you kidding me? We’ve got to stick around and talk to him!”

There’s no need to ask which _him_ he means--Crispin has seemed only half-seeing ever since the hypnotist walked offstage. Which seems a little excessive to Ned. Sure, it’s interesting that the craze for mediums has drawn an actual practitioner or two, but it’s hardly surprising. Practitioners are just people, after all, and the more Ned works with them, the more he’s started to see that they’re vulnerable to the same sins and vanities as everyone else--just with greater power behind them.

Still, if Crispin thinks there’s something in it--“D’you think he’s doing anything, well, dodgy? Need to meet with a couple of justiciars to scare him straight?” Ned’s not sure he likes the role, but he supposes they’re the ones that are there, and that’s the thing about a job like this one. It gets into your bones, and even on a day off, you can hardly just act like you didn’t see something and walk away.

“No! Well, yes,” Crispin allows reluctantly, “It’s pretty blatant use of craft in front of the unskilled, which I suppose is the point. But you said he was calling the power to him? Not looking for it and reaching for it, but calling it blindly? Maybe he can give me a few tips,” And here Crispin turns towards Ned, his face a mask of blind desire of the type that scares Ned sometimes. He can get used to spending time with practitioners, can learn about them and understand them in a hundred different ways, but this one thing, the naked craving for power that seems to be more of an inevitability than a sign of weakness or greed or ambition, is still a mystery to him, and he can’t help but hope it stays that way.

Still, if the dust-up yesterday has taught or reminded him of anything, it’s of the danger that goes along with Crispin’s trouble with his lack of senses. If Crispin thinks talking to the fellow in the ridiculous striped waistcoat will help him keep from draining himself dry the next time they’re on the trail of something more powerful than they are, Ned’s all for it. 

Plus, it’ll give them the chance to feel the fellow out, get a sense of his intentions. Crispin is right, that was a big display of power in front of an awful lot of people. It seemed harmless enough that Ned isn’t especially interested in turning him over to the council’s strange, unforgiving, medieval form of justice (Ned found out, a few weeks before, that Crispin had been right, and that cutting off his hands to stop him writing had been an option the council had seriously considered when trying to figure out what to do with them all those months ago), but it also probably warrants checking out.

Hanging about inside the tent is hardly going to get them what they need, though, and Ned has a notion he’ll be able to track their quarry down easily enough if they look in the right places, so he beckons Crispin after him, out of the tent, past the crowds, and around the back to where the wagons and animals and hastily-erected outbuildings are clustered together like a huddle of people around a fire.

In a stroke of luck, they catch the hypnotist climbing out of a wagon, although the arrogant smile he sends their way doesn’t make it feel like any kind of blessing. “I’m sorry, chaps, but I’m afraid I don’t sign autographs, and I don’t do private parties.”

Ned pastes on a genial expression and tries, “Afraid we’re not here as fans, mate. Though you were quite good.”

“How did you do it?” Crispin demands, and he looks--well, he looks besotted. If Ned were a more jealous man, he might feel bothered. As it is, he’s just a little agitated--after all, they’re approaching an illegal magic user who seems fairly talented as a pair of half-trained magical law-enforcement officers, one of whom doesn’t have any magic at all. Ned thinks he’s entitled to a few nerves.

“Ah, now that would be telling,” the magician says, and he’s clearly trying to sound smooth and sly, but Ned thinks he’s a little unnerved by the intensity in Crispin’s tone.

“We’ve got a few questions about the way you’re drawing on the ether,” Ned says, trying to sound like he knows what he’s talking about, and also trying to steer them in the direction of the subject they’re there to talk about without starting out by mentioning the justiciary. He’s not planning on hiding it, but he doesn’t see any need to start things off with whatever distrust the man might have for the peelers.

It seems like Ned’s caution is for nothing, though. “Did the justiciary send you?“ The man asks, the mask of sleazy geniality sliding off his face, leaving a tense, unpleasant expression.

“No one sent us,” Ned says, which is true enough, and carries the benefit of driving away a bit of suspicion from the man’s face. “And if you’re on the level, I don’t see why we should need to go to anyone about it, either. We hardly came looking for you, after all. Just here for a day out, eh?”

“ _On the level_ ,” the hypnotist parrots, something mocking in his tone, and Ned’s starting to wonder if maybe they _shouldn’t_ bring Esther in, after all.

“You weren’t reaching for the ether,” Crispin presses, like he hasn’t heard the exchange at all. “You were _channeling_ it,” and he’d sound accusatory if he wasn’t showing so much obvious longing.

“Rather,” the man says, nonplussed.

“ _How_?”

“How does anyone do anything?” and oh, even Ned can hear how that’s more bluster than it is an answer--all of the sudden, Ned feels sure this isn’t going to go the way Crispin is hoping, this fellow doesn’t have answers enough to help anyone. “I call it, and it comes.” After a moment, he relents enough to say, “The crowds help. When it’s just me calling, it’s hit or miss, but my focus and theirs? It’s enough. Well. You felt it.”

“But how do you _know_?” Crispin asks. “How can you know you’re not just draining yourself, if you--you haven’t got senses, either, do you?”

The fellow flinches, but when he speaks again, he sounds more human than at any point since Ned had first laid eyes on him. “Oh, you’ll know. You’ll feel it.”

Ned thinks of Crispin telling the warlock girl that is her master had gone through with the ritual, _you’d feel it, you’d know_.

Crispin nods slowly, and Ned wonders if he’s thinking the same thing, if there was something in that mess of vagueness and wariness and need that he could use.

“Is that all?” The hypnotist asks, irony drenching his tone. “Am I free to go?”

Crispin makes to nod again, expression distracted, like he’s still thinking the speech through, but Ned would like to know that he’s done his due diligence, at least, before they let the fellow wander off.

All of his worries boil down to the same question, in the end, so he asks it as quickly and baldly as he can. “ _Why?_ ”

If the _why_ is dangerous, after all, then the man is dangerous.

“It’s a rush?” The hypnotist says--asks--tests out on his tongue. “It’s freedom. It’s feeling power move through me and seeing how it makes people smile.” His eyes narrow a bit, shrewd. “Did you see me down there causing anyone any harm? If I wanted to profit, there are plenty of ways I could use a-- _gift_ like this. Riots could be just the beginning. But who has the energy for that?”

It’s a glib answer, and it sits sour in Ned’s stomach, but it’s what the fellow says next that hits home. “All I can do is tell you I’m not going to cause any harm. All you can do is either believe me, or not.”

That’s--it’s true, and it’s the kind of truth that feels a little like a blow. Ned looks over to Crispin, still thinking, and Crispin is with him again, brows furrowed, face troubled. The justiciary had thought of taking his hands, not because he’d hurt anyone, but because he _could have_. What would they do to someone who casts a spell like this using just his voice?

“He’s right, Ned. He could do a lot more damage a lot less out in the open, if he wanted to.” Crispin’s voice is low enough that Ned find himself ducking closer to hear, but when he has, he nods.

In the end, there’s nothing for it. You either strike first, he thinks, like the justiciary, like the council, or you hear people state their intentions, and then you wait to see if they follow through. He nods.

Ned holds out his hand to the hypnotist, a shake to seal the deal, and says. “I’m Ned Hall, I’m with the justiciary, and this is my partner, Crispin Treadarloe. We’ll be checking back in when your troupe comes back through town.”

...

Walking away from the fairground, after, Crispin still looks distracted, like he’s busily working his way through everything the hypnotist said, right behind his eyes, but too far away for Ned to reach.

 _Really?_ a voice somewhere deep within him asks. _This is what you want, this is what you’re looking for?_

 _Yes_ , Ned tells it, reaching out a hand to guide Crispin’s distracted steps around a puddle. _This is it exactly_ , and before he can think too much about it, he asks a question that’s been drifting through the back of his mind in one form or another for weeks.

“Come home with me?” Ned asks, and he means it.

“Yes,” Crispin agrees, apparently without a thought, turning in the direction of Grape Street.

The thing is, Ned always means it, but he finds himself meaning it more than usual, or in a different way than usual, and he hasn’t spent a lot of time thinking this through exactly, but it’s been churning through a secret corner of his mind for long enough that he doesn’t feel any hesitation about clarifying, “I mean, I mean for good this time.”

Crispin’s eyes widen a little, but he just nods and agrees again, “Yes, of course.”

“The lease is almost up on the shop,” Ned goes on, “And there’s really no sense in keeping a shop anyway, now I don’t buy or sell anything. So now that we’re in clover,” and they are, a little, from Ned’s point of view, anyway, though he has a notion Crispin has a spot of family money, and a justiciar’s pay may look a little paltry in comparison. Still, the salary puts them on something like even ground, “I thought we could find digs somewhere with two rooms, maybe a little sitting room. Plenty of chaps do that.”

“They do,” Crispin agrees, but he sounds a little cautious about it, goes on, “There’ll still be talk, though, you know that, right?”

“Sure, fine, so we’ll look for something in a neighborhood that won’t ask questions,” Ned agrees, a little giddy with the rush of having said what he wanted out loud, both in the sense that he’s admitted it to himself and in the sense that he’s managed to say it to Crispin. Still, there’s an edge of unease that’s starting to work its way into the back of his mind. “Not if you don’t like, I know this is a little sudden, and that it’s--that it’s rather a lot, working with a chap every day and then going home to the same chap every night. I don’t mind if you’d like to think it through first, either, I just wanted to ask. And I thought--” Ned is not asking out of nowhere, he’s not too out-of-line here, he doesn’t think. “I thought that because you’re at the shop so often. That you might want to be a part of figuring out where I go next.”

“Ned,” Crispin breathes, and his eyes are very wide and very bright. “Ned, yes. I don’t want to think about it, I want to say yes. I just wanted to check, I don’t know how long you’ve been thinking about this,” And here he reaches out. He lets his hand fall before it reaches Ned’s shoulder, which is probably for the best--the site down by the river has cleared out considerably in the hour or so since the show has been over, but they’re still very much in public. And if Crispin reached out now, Ned isn’t sure he’d be able to stop himself from drawing him close. “I don’t want you getting into something you’ll regret, is all,” Crispin finishes. “Certainly not over me.”

It’s sincere enough to hurt Ned’s heart, and promising that he’ll never have any regrets feels stupid and impossible, but in this moment he wants to. Instead, he says, “I have been thinking about it. More than I’ve been admitting to myself, probably,” and, softer, leaning in a little nearer, “I like the thought of coming home to you, Freckles. I like falling asleep next to you and knowing you’ll still be there when I wake up.”

A smile breaks across Crispin’s face. “Oh, is that what this is all about? Not wanting to wake up to an empty bed?” He says it lightly, like it’s nothing, trivial, but it is part of it, of what Ned now knows, suddenly and with certainty, that he wants--to have an idea of where Crispin will be, and to know that they’ve decided to share that space together.

“Among other things,” he says, a little cautiously, and still searching Crispin’s face for a sign of how this conversation that he hadn’t quite planned on having is going. “Is that so bad?”

Crispin blushes, looks down, bites his lip, but then looks back up again to meet Ned’s eyes. “I’ve said yes, you know. A few times.” And it’s true, he has, but it isn’t until he says so that Ned feels he really has his answer.

“So it’s settled?” Ned has a month or two more on his lease on the shop, but it isn’t much time, and he’d like to figure out the next step soon. Just hearing Crispin commit to being a part of it makes him feel a bit lighter in a way that he hadn’t even realized he’d felt weighed down for.

“It’s settled,” Crispin agrees, reaching up a hand as if to brush something off of Ned’s shoulder. Ned knows he can’t feel the warmth of the touch, but something about the weight of it, brief as it is, warms him.


End file.
